9 thoughts on “The Worst Place to Be A Woman”

  3. Well, here’s a story from the blog View From The Right:
    “Just one big humanity
    President Bush and his supporters not only repeat the mantra that Muslim parents love their children just as we love ours; they make this purported similarity between Muslims and ourselves the main basis of their belief that the Muslim world can be democratized.
    NBC News Middle East bureau chief Richard Engel recently appeared on Tim Russert’s program on CNBC to talk about the “unseen Iraq.” He told the story of an Iraqi family whose daughter had been kidnapped. When the leader of the kidnappers called the father on the telephone to get ransom, he put the daughter on the phone to show that she was still alive. The father asked her if they had raped her. Crying, she said yes. The father told the daughter to put the kidnapper on the phone again. The father said to the kidnapper: “I don’t want her.” So the kidnappers killed her.”
    I don’t know that I have an opinion that that’s the worst place, but it’s a pretty bad place.

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  5. I wasn’t able to access the linked video, but speaking of bad places to be born female, there’s a great recent documentary called “Cut from Different Cloth: Burqas and Beliefs.” A young American woman lives with an Afghan family and her dad and step-mother film her interactions with the family and other Afghans, including leaders of local women’s organizations, and a 13-year-old divorcee. The hosting Afghan family is “liberal” and the daughters include a doctor, a midwife, and a lawyer. The lawyer was made to give up her job by her husband upon marriage, the midwife’s fiance is insisting she stop working, and the doctor would like to get married and have a baby, but knows that she would lose her freedom and the career that she loves if she got married. Some of the best footage shows the sisters sparring with a younger brother, who smolders with resentment and talks about how unhappy he is with the fact that his parents educated his sisters. He also tells them how much they like the burqa while they heatedly disagree with him. Anyway, the documentary is well worth the $20 or so for anyone who’d like to know from the inside how that kind of society works. My husband and I showed it to a small group of college students and had very lively discussion on it.
    I’m putting heavy emphasis here on employment for married women, even though I don’t think that that’s really the sine qua non of female existence. Lack of jobs are just the icing on the cake, since they can’t leave the house without husband’s permission and can’t go out with face uncovered. Furthermore, the ex-lawyer’s husband threatened to leave her because of her sister’s planned solo trip to America.

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  6. I’m sorry that you weren’t able to see the video. It’s Kristoff from the Times talking about the large number of women who die in childbirth in parts of Africa. He films a scene in the are maternity hospital in Swaziland. A woman walks off the street into the hospital. The midwife does a quick check and realizes that woman is in labor. And the baby is breech. Really stunning clip.

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  7. Heartbreaking. Thanks for sharing. The following videos, “Abraham’s Mother” about a baby whose mother died in childbirth and “A Struggle to Survive” about young women who suffer from fistulas following a stillbirth.
    Here’s the permalink to the video you wanted to link to: http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=ae57b849af8a3eec78d7095b149b19561e18f738
    (I check, it’s different from the link you have up there. I decided to comment because just last Thursday I found out that the NY Times provides permalink button right beside the articles and videos too).

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  8. Sorry, I guess my link doesn’t work either, it’s the same as yours. I feel SO stupid now!
    What I did was I kept on going to the next page of the archived videos, found the one you’re referring to and started watching. tHen tried to get the link. But what I actually wanted to say was:
    OH, and the fourth part, titled “Mothers at risk” features the whole birth of that breech baby! Did you see that? WOW. I’m in tears here.
    The “email this link” link doesn’t work either, it gets into the Time select page.
    That’s too bad!

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